Fracture
by I'vebeenLOKI'Dyetagain
Summary: An exploration of Bucky's thoughts throughout significant events in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" as his Hydra conditioning fractures.


**So, I know that lots of people have already written fanfics of Bucky's thoughts throughout _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_, but I wrote this (because you know - the _feels)_ so I figured I'd toss it out there ;3**

**I may have seen the movie three times now (damn that movie is amazing!), but I still don't have it memorized, so please forgive me if some of the dialogue or whatever in this isn't perfectly correct. Anyways, I hope you enjoy!  
**

**This is Bucky's POV, second-person.**

* * *

You can hear them.

(You bugged the place, after all.) And you can tell exactly where the two men are, even through the solid apartment wall. You can tell your target by his voice, his tread, the creaking of the floorboards beneath his heavy step. The one-eyed man may have gotten away from you once. But he will not get away again. Nobody gets away from the Winter Soldier.

He gets up from a chair with a exhalation of effort, begins walking towards that quiet man that slipped in through the window, and you raise your gun up, listening and—_Bang! Bang! Bang! _Blind you place three bullets through the wall, and you can hear the soft sounds of blood spurting and flesh tearing as each one pierces his chest. He lets out a pained moan, falls to the floor.

You wait, analyzing his heartbeat. It stutters. Pounding. Weak. You deem him a goner, then, and the quiet man through the window—his eyes spark as he spots you.

_Go! _And you're gone—running over rooftops with the wind cool against your face and tangling in your hair.

Jump, roll, sprint, _faster. _

You can hear him in pursuit, crashing through the buildings after you, splintering wood doors and shattering glass.

There's a metallic _whir_ through the air (he's carrying a shield, you recall) and as you turn and your arm shoots out it clangs, echoes against our metal hand.

His expression is one of shock. You fling the metal disc back, hard into his stomach, and hear the whoosh of air from his lungs.

And you know it won't take him out—not _him—_but it gives you a moment, and you leap from the building; a moment is all you need to disappear.

Disappear into the city sounds and the chaos is better than a cloak, artificial lights beading like rain in your black-rimmed eyes.

Another mission accomplished.

(Behind your mask, your lips never move, not even so much as a twitch.)

* * *

There.

You stand in the road like an apparition—a ghost, for all that they know. Cars streak around you, several tons of metal and as they swerve to miss you, you don't even flinch.

Behind your mask, your breathing is slow and even.

Your targets come straight at you, and you can see the fear in their faces, as you're leaping over and landing in a crouch on the roof with your silver fingers scratching and digging in. And the window is nothing—and now so is the Hydra traitor (like a bug on a windshield).

And you can taste their panic, electric, lightning on your tongue, and straight through the glass again goes your metal hand, but this time it is the steering wheel that is your target.

The car is swerving, crashing, and you're flipping and then perching on the car of your allies, who smell even more frightened then your targets, and you know their panic will no doubt move them to fire there guns and keep firing without thinking.

But that doesn't matter, because the gun in _your _hands is an extension of your limbs and your mind and it purrs when you pull the trigger, and you know you can't be killed.

_Bang! _The girl's bullet scratches your goggles and you pull back beneath the railing, pulling off the damaged lenses and flinging them aside.

_How annoying._

You return fire, peeved—nobody gets a shot at you and lives—you'll deal with this one personally, let the others find the man. Yeah they're incompetent, but surely they can manage that?

You vault down from the bridge, a car crunching beneath your feet, then you're off and stalking the street, terrified humans screaming and running like frightened rabbits all around you that you don't pay any heed.

Because through all the commotion you hear it: a voice, quiet but not quiet enough.

You locate her exact location, gun friendly in your hands as you aim and fire. An explosion, cars sent flying, your hair whipping, wave of heat against your face.

One mission accomp—_dammit! _

You didn't giver her enough credit. But nobody gets the best of you—not twice—and this time you manage to get a bullet in her shoulder. Aim again to finish her off.

That sound of metal slicing through the air again, and once more there's the blond man, and you really need to end him, because this is just getting annoying.

Punch, kick, roll, strike, catch, duck, shoot, roll, flip, crouch, fling, punch—there's something familiar about how this man fights.

Your metal fingers around his neck, but he just doesn't know when to give up, does he?

And he's prying you off and tossing you down, the mask coming off in his hands and you whip around _glaring _because he's good and you're almost impressed but he can't hurt you.

His face is one of shock, and for some reason betrayal, disbelief, and there's no reason he should be so surprised about anything because he is going to die by your hand.

"Bucky?" the man says, aghast. In his eyes—recognition?

But nobody knows you. You are the Winter Soldier. You are a ghost.

"Who the hell is Bucky?" you ask, because there's no reason he should see your face and think to put a name to it aside from Death.

His hopeful face falls, and as Hydra swarms in, you fall back, put distance between yourself and that voice and that word that continue to reverberate through your head.

* * *

_Bucky. _

_Bucky, _he'd called you, in a voice that won't leave you alone, tickling and itching as you scratch it red.

Something about him is familiar—so painfully familiar, like you recognize him more than you recognize yourself when you look in the mirror.

And his name is on the tip of your tongue and you can almost taste it, something warm and sweet like hot chocolate in the winter.

And the image of his face flashes behind your eyes ever time you blink, a ghost, as if he was the sun and you'd stared at him for too long, too long and it left blinding colors tattooed in your retinas, where you know that everything should be dark. You try to identify him in your databanks, but you can't, _you can't_ and he's _not there_ but you know that he _should_ be, and it's like trying to remember a pleasant dream that insists on fading, asphyxiated in nightmares.

And all you can remember is a vague feeling of... something... something that you want to remember but you _can't._ Something like the feeling of smiling, something you haven't felt in so long you're sure that if your lips so much as twitched upwards, they would be sore for weeks—that you could be put to sleep somewhere dark and cold and be woken up years later and they would _still _ache.

And there's glimpses of falling, of snow and blood and cold, cold voices and cold, cold hands, and bright lights that glinted on a metal limb _that shouldn't be there _but punches the people away from you well enough.

You remember anger, blazing hot and red.

But now there is only snow.

And people are swarming around you, and their voices and their hands are cold and distracting and it hurts, it _hurts it hurts it hurts_ and you're not used to feeling this kind of pain, because when you look down at your chest there is no wound there, no blood seeping out of your flesh and flowing scarlet over your skin, and these people their touch is so _cold _and you want them away, away, _get away! _

You strike out, and they startle like pigeons.

Never, during any of your missions, had your heart pounded as furiously as it did now, trapped in your chest as if it didn't belong there.

"Mission report." The words mean nothing to you.

"Mission report."

Flashes of memories that can't be your own, because there's that man's damnable face, all care and determination and clear-sky eyes.

"_Mission report."_ Someone strikes your face, physical pain enough to snap you back into place.

But still you can't think—not of anything besides: "That man on the bridge. Who was he?" You stare sightlessly into the face of authority, mangy hair and confusion obscuring your vision.

"You met him on an previous assignment."

Yes—the quiet man. But that's not an answer. "I knew him," you say, and if you didn't already hurt so much you would wince at the confusion and doubt that threads through your voice like barbed wire.

You know that you did, and if you could just _remember his name..._

"Your work has been a gift to mankind. You've shaped the century. And I need you to do it one more time."

By killing him. By killing that man with the summer-blue eyes and the voice of a ghost.

You have to kill him. "But I knew him."

Biting your lip. Biting your lip like a child. (Since when did you bite your lip? When you were a child? Were you _ever _a child?)

The men around you are talking, and they push you back into the chair but you don't fight because you know what's coming and you want so badly to feel _empty. _

And though the pain in your head brings a scream to your throat as your teeth grind into rubber, this pain is a welcome feeling compared to the _other _pain because _this _pain you know how to deal with.

When the procedure stops and you close your eyes, everywhere there are snowflakes, white and clean and cold.

(The sunlight is gone, and winter takes hold.)

* * *

You're waiting.

When the man vaults onto the walkway in the heart of the ship, you're waiting for him.

He stares at you, and you stare back. Waiting.

"People are gonna die, Buck. Don't make me do this."

Don't make him what? Fight?

You tilt your chin down, leveling your gaze. (Fighting, always fighting, always always fighting; what you live fore, what you were born for, what you were made for.)

The man in the ridiculous star-spangled suit tilts his own chin down in resolve.

Still you wait.

Let him move first—he throws the shield, and you easily knock it aside, and then you're both a storm of movement, not time to think, just reacting, and he might pack a punch but.

You are the Winter Soldier.

So you punch and kick and stab and _fall, _and there's a computer chip that he keeps dropping.

That chip—you don't know what it is, but _he _wants it, so you try to take it (so much like a child stealing a toy) and you _won't let it go he can't make you pain doesn't hurt you __you never surrender you are unbreakable he cannot break you__. _

But pain has nothing to do with it as he chokes you, pins your limbs down and strangles you, black spots gather at the corners of your vision and creep closer, all through your sight like a sky darkened by a murder of crows, a murmuration of starlings, and it's snowing black and unconscious like a ghost _he's killing you..._

* * *

Blink. Blink. Darkness, light.

Upright in a moment, and the man is scrambling back towards the ship's control, and your hands are flying to the gun strapped to your thigh, and you raise it and fire.

_Bang!_—his leg. _Bang!_—his hand. _Bang!_—straight through his chest, but you know you've missed his heart.

What's wrong with you? You should not be this shaky. Even just recovering from being choked, your hands should not tremble so and throw off your aim because you don't miss you're not supposed to miss and _why the hell didn't he just kill you and end it?_

A moment of silence, except for the man's gasping. His breaths ragged, wet, he hauls himself up and plugs in the computer chip and at this point you don't care because he's wounded and it will be so easy to finish him off if need be because if he doesn't get help then he can't be too far from dying. You know the fingers of death when they are grasping (metal fingers, _your fingers)._

Except that then the helicarrier is being blasted and torn apart and there's explosions of too-bright red and orange and yellow and there's a beam falling and _you're not fast enough _and it pins you down and _no no no you're trapped you're trapped failing you can't fail _and you try to push it off you but it's no use, and the man sees you and jumps down and you redouble your efforts because _he's going to kill you hurt you end you and no no you can't go out like this not like this...!_

But then he's lifting the beam, groaning in exertion and pain because he's still got bullet holes in him and yet he manages to lift the metal enough for you to scramble out and he lets it fall back down and now you're approaching him with murder in your gaze because he is an idiot and you have no mercy and need to complete your mission because he was stupid and gave you a chance and you're going to take it because you _cannot fail. _

"Bucky," the man says. "I'm not going to fight you. You're my friend."

He lets the shield fall, slip from his fingers and through the broken glass of the helicarrier and into the water of the Potomac, and it has to be the stupidest thing you've ever seen anybody do.

"Your name is James Buchanan Barnes," he says, as you proceed to beat him bloody. "You know me. You've known me your whole life."

"_No I don't!" _you yell, because you can feel something fracturing.

You are the Winter Soldier. And, like winter, you are a force of nature. (Like when the Nazis invaded Russia, but for all their military power, the winter stopped them, froze them, defeated them.)

Nobody can beat the harsh, unrelenting and apathetic cruelty of winter.

But here this man is, like spring sunlight, and the ice is cracking.

The world is shattering, and you can hear it splinter like icicles against the ground, sharp and cold as a scream.

The fog in your mind clears away to reveal blurry shapes that you feel like you know from another place, if you could only make out his face through all the snow; because your mind is a blizzard and all you know is blinding white pain and numbing cold.

You get your orders and you cock and load, churning like a machine in binary code as you feel _nothing_ and all your thoughts revolve around completing your mission's goal.

But those blue eyes through the falling snow, screaming a name that you feel like you should know—except you don't.

_You don't you don't you don't... you don't know this man, you don't!_

Yet his voice grates at your skin, and the integrity of what you _are_ is compromised—he speaks words that you swear you don't know the meaning of, but you can remember those blue eyes from when he was child-sized, and there never was a warmer blue. _(T__here never was a warmer blue, there never was...__)_

And your metal arm swings again and again and again, as you remind yourself what they said—_you're more robot th__a__n man._ And he knows nothing and you're nothing like him.

Shut up _shut up "Shut up!" _because your brain is pounding like machine gun fire and you're supposed to be cold and collected and calculating but he's warmth so warm his gaze his voice like spring and no no_no,_ you're thawing, you're melting, _you're melting. _

The glacier in your mind is melting and there's an impending avalanche that in slow motion is descending and_ no no no_ _you're going to be buried alive, suffocating_—you're failing your mission and you know that when you get back to Hydra that pain will be awaiting you.

And why didn't this man kill you while you were pinned helpless beneath that beam? Why didn't he hurt you like you expected him to? He should have killed you. _Why didn't he kill you?_

"You're my friend," he tells you, but you don't know what the hell that _means._

"You're my mission," you snarl at him, panting, staring into his bloodied face, his lip split, one of those blue eyes beaten closed (a feeling of deja vu), before you reel back your metal arm to deal the final blow because you need to complete your mission and _the Winter Soldier does not fail._

"Then finish it. Because I'll be with you until the end of the line."

Your eyes are wide and wild and the breath is trying to claw it's way out of your throat in some form of words but it's stuck and now it's your mind rather than your arm that is reeling and _why is that __phrase__ familiar?_

You thought you were as cold, as hard, as your bionic arm, but there's a moment where you remember two hands of flesh and bone, handing a skinny blue-eyed boy a key and letting him know he's not alone.

And for a moment the blizzard clears and you see his face, as the glass shatters and he falls into watery space, a watery grave, and he's a goner and you know—_bleeding, drowning_—that you should leave him to die alone; to die alone as you feel.

Because in the churning white, isolation feels like all you've ever known, but seeing his face brings memories of a feeling called "home," and he's the only person, as far as you know, who hasn't wanted to hurt you, to you use you—and you can't let him go.

As you dive down into the water, freefalling, you know you've felt this peace before with the wind hugging your body, and the water when you hit is shockingly warm, as you grab his limp form, swimming and dragging him to shore.

A moment you look into this man's busted face, and you realize that he has a name—you just can't remember what it is. You can't remember. _You can't you can't you can't..._

_Steve?_

The world whirls around you like you're on a rollercoaster ride—a Cyclone—Conny Island?-and dizzy you walk away before you can be sick.

"_Bucky,"_ he'd called you—the name echoes through your head, getting softer, getting louder, and something about it feels right and something about it feels wrong but something about it is all too familiar.

Metal heart, metal hand. You stagger. A flash of red, white and blue _(blood, snow and sky)_ before your eyes, then bright, blinding lights, and there's people hovering and people talking and something hurting—and they can wash your mind clean all they want, but some things are chiseled in.

And hope like a harp, but the strings all broke. Huckleberry jam on toast.

And the needles were cold, pumping winter through your veins, but you never rewarded them with a scream. Or did you? Deaf in frost-white pain.

Shiver, shiver, shake and quiver, somewhere dark, strapped down, trapped. _"__W__hy me?"_ you'd rasped.

A voice, thick German accent. You felt hate. _"__B__ecause you're the best."_

"_T__he best at what?"_ you'd tried to laugh.

"_T__he best fighter."_ A pause. _"T__he best killer."_

Your veins froze. But through the drugs and the pain you didn't notice your body turn cold.

Somewhere, the glass shattered, and everywhere there used to be silence you heard whispers, voices that rang familiar, and the world fluctuated in your vision, one moment a watery blur, the next crystal, icy clear.

Ashes to ashes, down you fall, forever and ever, into the snow; and it's cold and it's white, and it's white and it's cold, freezing your heart and freezing your soul till there's no warmth left and all you are is a ghost—all you are is a ghost in a ghost story, always there where they'll never see. They'll never see you.

_You're not a man,_ they told you, _you're a weapon, a tool, a machine. _

But the man with those blue, blue eyes, his voice had bled of horror, of desperation.

"_Bucky,"_ he'd called you—a foreign word.

You wish you knew what it meant. You wish you _knew..._

* * *

**Yep, so there it is - my interpretation of Bucky's character arc through CA:TWS. And yes, I did see the end scene after the credits with Bucky at the Smithsonian, however I didn't include it because I thought it was better to just leave this one-shot here because I would have wanted to include the writing on the sign about Bucky and then I would have wanted to continue it and maybe I will explore past the end of the movie in another piece but for this one I just wanted to keep things simple. So yeah ;3  
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**Please review and let me know what you think!  
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